A fate so obvious seemed to require no explanation. Mr. Penwyn had gone for his gallop across the moor, as he had announced his intention of doing, and betrayed by the thickening mists of an autumnal evening, his brain more or less confused by the grief and agitation he had undergone, he had lost ken of that familiar ground and had galloped straight at the cliff. This was the conclusion of Sir Nugent and Viola, and subsequently of the world in general. The only curious circumstance in the whole business was the Squire’s use of his spur, a punishment he had never been known to inflict upon Tarpan before that fatal ride. This was commented upon in the stable, and formed the subject of various nods and significant shoulder shrugs, finally resulting in the dictum that the Squire had been off his head, poor chap, after losing his pretty wife.
So, after an inquest and verdict of accidental death, Madge Penwyn’s early grave was opened, and he who had loved her with an unmeasured love was laid beside her in that peaceful restingplace.
Justina did not deprive little Nugent of his too early inherited estate. A compromise was effected between the infant’s next friend, Sir Nugent Bellingham, and Justina’s next friend, Maurice Clissold, and the baby-squire kept his land and state, while Justina became proprietress of the mines, the royalties, upon which, according to Messrs. Pergament, were worth three thousand a year. Great was the excitement in the Royal Albert Theatre when the young lady who had made so successful a debut in ‘No Cards’ retired, on her inheritance of a fortune.
There was a quiet wedding, one November morning, in one of the Bloomsbury churches—a wedding at which Matthew Elgood gave the bride away, and Martin Trevanard was best man—a quiet, but not less enjoyable, wedding breakfast in the Bloomsbury lodging, and then a parting, at which Mr. Elgood, affected at once by grief and Moselle, wept copiously.
‘It’s the first time you’ve been parted from your adopted father, my love,’ he sobbed; ‘and he’ll find it a hard thing to live without you. Take her, Clissold; there never was a better daughter—and as the daughter, so the wife. She’s a girl in a thousand. “Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think, that e’er the sun shone bright on.” God bless you both. Excuse an old man’s tears. They won’t hurt you.’
And so, with much tenderness on Justina’s side, they parted, the bride and bridegroom driving away to the Charing Cross Station, on the first stage of their journey to Rome, where they were to stay till the end of January. There had been a still sadder parting for Justina that morning in the quiet house between Kentish Town and Highgate, where the bride had spent the hour before her wedding. Muriel had kissed her, and blessed her, and admired her in her pretty white dress, and so they had parted, between smiles and tears.
When bride and bridegroom were comfortably seated in the railway carriage, travelling express to Dover, Maurice took an oblong parcel out of his pocket, and laid it in Justina’s lap.
‘Your wedding present, love.’
‘Not jewels I hope, Maurice.’